Marc I. White PhD - Executive Director
Dr. Marc White is co-founder and executive director of the Canadian Institute for the Relief of Pain and Disability. He is a Clinical Assistant Professor with the Department of Family Practice at the University of British Columbia and a principal investigator affiliated with AUTO21, Networks of Centres of Excellence. Dr. White held an appointment as Research Fellow in Medicine, Harvard Medical School and at the Division of Rheumatology, Immunology & Allergy, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (2005 – 2008). Formerly a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Arthritis Research Centre of Canada (2003-2005). His research areas include research translation (reducing the gap between what is known from high quality research and what is done in policy, training and practice), continuing medical education, disability prevention, consumer health education and primary care renewal.
Dr. White is the lead investigator for the Health and Work Productivity Web-Portal, an academic community partnership dedicated to translating best evidence on disability prevention and employee health, as well as a public website focused on whiplash prevention (whiplashprevention.org). He has organized over 20 international and national conferences held in Canada, United States, United Kingdom and Europe. Dr. White is an invited scientific reviewer for several journals including Canadian Family Physician, The Journal of Rheumatology, Injury Prevention (BMJ) and Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. He is currently a board member of the BC Collaborative for Disability Prevention, and for several years served as a board member for the Canadian Pain Coalition.
Tonya Hyde - Project Manager
Tonya Hyde received her undergraduate degree from the University of Washington in Women Studies in 2007 and Intermediate Website Development Courses at the Seattle School of Visual Arts. Previous to joining CIRPD, Tonya worked for a third-party worker’s compensation claim company in Seattle organizing safety trainings, assisting claim managers, managing websites and other administrative duties.
More recently she was involved in e-commerce marketing for CharityUSA.com. She is currently delving into the world of social media for non-profit organizations, while managing the office at CIRPD. Tonya was drawn to CIRPD because of her interest in chronic pain issues, women studies and the application of up-to-date research to help people live with chronic pain.
--Chronic pain affects a higher proportion of women than men around the world, but unfortunately women are also less likely to receive treatment compared to men. This is due to various factors, including societal and cultural norms and economic and governmental barriers. ~ International Association for the Study of Pain
Sahar Arshad - HWP Project Officer
Sahar Arshad’s journey with CIRPD began as a volunteer for a Data Verifier position in December 2008 which then followed a full-time role as an Administrative Assistant and is now working as a Project Officer for a web-portal project which is called “The Health & Work Productivity Web Portal”. She is currently involved in defining workflows, writing technical specifications, developing architectural design diagrams and creating screen designs for the Web Portal.
Sahar received her undergraduate degree in computer science in 2004 from National University of Computer & Emerging Sciences (FAST-NU), Islamabad, Pakistan and has since then worked as a Business Development Manager, Business Analyst and Product Manager at IT companies. During this time, she also acquired a professional diploma in project management from Pakistan Institute of Management.
Her motivation to work for CIRPD can be summarized by the following saying:
"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do." -- Edward Hale
Mehmet Ali Vural - Senior IT Programer/Analyst
Mehmet Ali Vural is CIRPD’s Senior IT Programmer/Analyst. Since 2002, Mehmet has been responsible for oversight of CIRPD’s website architecture and design working with other contactors and volunteers. Mehmet is skilled in many computer languages including ASP.NET, C#, SharePoint, ColdFusion, Web Services, ADO, ADO.NET, JS, HTML, WML, SQL, LINQ, XML, and VB Scripting.
Mehmet has been instrumental in the creation of innovative webservices to webservices linkages with the National Library of Medicine to support CIRPD developing SharePoint Portal project – The Health and Work Productivity Web-Portal. In addition to his work with CIRPD, Mehmet is on contract with AeroInfo (Boeing Canada) as Senior Programmer/Analyst for numerous projects.
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